It was the Tuesday after Easter, and the priest who was
celebrating Mass for our group of volunteers at an inner-city Jesuit middle
school was practically bursting with joy.
"Alleluia," he exclaimed loudly, not just once but many
times.
We were, he reminded us, in the octave of Easter, meaning the
eight days (octave from the Latin meaning "eight") between Easter
Sunday and the following Sunday. Then, we were also into the 50 days of the
Easter season leading to the feast of Pentecost June 9th.
So, Alleluia! Time to celebrate. We should all be rejoicing in
the incredible, life-altering fact that Jesus, after a horrific death, rose
from the dead on Easter morning.
So why is it that sometimes the Lenten season of 40 days seems to
grab our attention a little more deeply than the 50 days of Easter celebration?
Don't most of us like a good party? Isn't it more fun to celebrate than to don
sackcloth and ashes?
I don't necessarily have the answer to these questions. Actually,
the season of Easter brings with it many questions for us, as it did for the
first disciples.
My suspicion is that a lot of people are comfortable in a
spirituality that accepts suffering and sorrow. It's not hard to believe that a
good man was persecuted and murdered by religious and civil authorities — we've
seen it countless times throughout history.
Even in our own society today, we know that many innocent people
have been executed by the state. We see injustice worldwide, the innocent dying
in Sri Lanka at Easter Sunday Mass, a Saudi Arabian journalist killed and
dismembered for searching for the truth, churches in the rural South burned
down because of hatred.
We want to feel God's presence in sorrow and sickness and
injustice, and Lent brings us home to that. It invites us to participate in
that suffering through almsgiving, prayer, fasting, our personal sacrifice. We
get it. We feel at home with the God who suffers with us.
But then the miracle of Easter occurs. The Galilean appears to
Mary of Magdala in the garden after his resurrection, overturning the sorrow of
the Garden of Eden and the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus becomes the cosmic
Christ, alive in our world today, promising us life beyond the corruption of
death.
If this event is true, it is history's most remarkable
occurrence. When we accept the resurrection of Christ, it should change
everything. Everything.
If we tried to increase our prayer life during Lent, we should
double our efforts now. If we tried to face the world's injustice during Lent,
we should turn there more deeply now.
But in the days between the Resurrection and Pentecost, we see
the apostles themselves being both awestruck and confused. It was a time to
talk, to walk to Emmaus and share both their puzzlement and their wonder, even
opening up to a perceived stranger on the road.
It was a time of questioning, of asking to place our hands in the
wound, before the Spirit enlivened everyone's courage on Pentecost.
So, during these 50 days, perhaps our ambiguity mirrors that of
the apostles. Did this really happen? What are we to make of the events we have
seen?
We celebrate, we loudly proclaim "Alleluia," but we
also hover in that upper room, wondering what this event means for the rest of
our lives. As Christians, it is the question we cannot deny or avoid. It's the
pivotal question of our entire existence.
Who is this man in the garden? And what does he ask of me?
Caldarola writes from Omaha, Neb.